As the mileage on a tire increases, the sidewall rubber surfaces often become dull and unattractive. This is due to various causes including wind, weather, sunlight, scratching, abrasion from dirt, and other chemical and physical reactions. Many products are available today on the market for tire dressing usage to address these adverse effects. These products are referred to hereinafter as “tire dressing products”. Many of these products restore older appearance from a dull, weathered appearance to a shiny, bright, and like-new condition. For example, conventionally a dispersion of the silicone fluids in petroleum distillates or a conventional oil in water silicone emulsion system with milky or opaque appearance are often used to restore the attractive, bright, shiny, and like-new appearance on the tire surface. Typically conventional tire dressing formulas for dressing and appearance applications are products containing both high viscosity and low viscosity silicone fluids blended in petroleum distillates or products containing silicone emulsions prepared in aqueous systems with milky white and opaque appearance. When applied to a tire surface, the silicone composition forms a coating which develops a desired shiny appearance due to the unique structure of the silicone layer formed on the tire surface.
A solution or dispersion of silicone oil or wax in an organic solvent and an aqueous emulsion prepared therefrom with the aid of a surfactant are generally employed as tire dressing agents. However, while these polishing agents impart good gloss and acceptable water repellency to tires, they are readily stripped off by rain and dust so that the effects are relatively transitory or short-lived.
In addition, aqueous-based tire dressings typically show poor adherence to the surface of tires because of the low surface energy of the surface relative to the surface energy of the aqueous compositions. As a result most of the existing tire dressing products on the market use an organic solvent-based system, with silicone fluids dispersed in the hydrocarbon solvent, which have a lower surface energy than the tire surface. Therefore, there is a need for an improved tire-dressing composition, preferably aqueous-based, which could provide a durable, shiny, water-repellant coating on a tire surface. Preferably, such a tire-dressing composition is silicone-based.